brook — English Dictionary

Verb

1. To bear; endure; support; put up with; tolerate.

   Usage

   • Formal
   • Transitive
   • in the negative

   Examples

   brook no refusal

   I will not brook any disobedience.

   More examples (7)

   I will brook no impertinence.

   how shall I brook to be the first cause of difference between a father and son, to whom the averted look and the harsh word have been hitherto unknown?

   But Sophia's mother was not the woman to brook defiance. After a few moments' vain remonstrance her husband complied. His manner and appearance were suggestive of a satiated sea-lion.

   After delivering the reply he ordered the annalists, who have charge of the knots, to take note of it and include it in their tradition. By now the Spaniards, who were unable to brook the length of the discourse, had left their places and fallen on the Indians

   The norm is submission to the supposed iron laws of technological inevitability that brook no impediment.

   The faith in destiny and moral certainty claimed by would-be liberators brooks no resistance, and to register objections to their devotion is to be seen as the enemy of rightness.

   On just the first day of the war, more than 1,300 protesters across Russia, many of them chanting “No to war,” were detained, The Times reported, quoting a rights group. That’s no small number in a country where Putin brooks little dissent.

2. To enjoy the use of; make use of; profit by; to use, enjoy, possess, or hold.

   Usage

   • Transitive

   Synonyms

   applyemployutilizeuse

   Examples

   Yea, my Lord: how brooks your Grace the ayre, / After your late toſſing on the breaking Seas?

   More examples (1)

   The girl’s spirit would brook a husband under no such conditions: she was not minded to run forward because Pen chose to hold out the handkerchief, and her tone, in reply to Arthur, showed her determination to be independent.

3. To earn; deserve.

   Usage

   • Obsolete
   • Transitive

Noun

1. A body of running water smaller than a river; a small stream.

   Usage

   • Northeastern
   • US usage

   Synonyms

   beckburncouleecreekgillrillrivuletstream

   Examples

   empties itself, as doth an inland brook / into the main of waters

   The Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water.

   More examples (2)

   But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. ¶[…]The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window at the old mare feeding in the meadow below by the brook,[…].

   "Most of them don't wash. Those who do usually plunge their head into some brook or rill, if there happens to be one about."

2. A water meadow, or (in the plural) low, marshy ground.

   Usage

   • Kent

Noun

1. a natural stream of water smaller than a river (and often a tributary of a river)

   Synonyms

   creek

   Broader terms

   streamwatercourse

   Examples

   the creek dried up every summer

Verb

1. put up with something or somebody unpleasant

   Synonyms

   digestendurestick outstomachbearstandtoleratesupportabidesufferput up

   Broader terms

   permitallowletcountenance

   Examples

   I cannot bear his constant criticism

   The new secretary had to endure a lot of unprofessional remarks

   More examples (2)

   he learned to tolerate the heat

   She stuck out two years in a miserable marriage